German published patent application DE-OS 18 13 567 discloses a saw chain which includes a cutting plate seated in a recess open toward the front when viewed in the direction of movement of the saw chain. The cutting plate is made of hard metal or similar wear-resistant material and is attached to the recess by soldering. The cutting plate made of a high wear-resistant material is braced on a first supporting surface on the base body of the cutting link which lies in the direction of movement of the saw chain. The cutting plate is also braced against a rearward supporting surface lying preferably transverse to the first supporting surface. The cutting links are configured as planing teeth and are loaded by the cutting force which acts on the cutting edge as well as pressure forces which act in the longitudinal direction of the chain and transverse forces which, after a relatively short running time, provide a situation which can lead to a breakout of the hard soldered insert with the load on the soldering location being very substantial as a consequence of its small width and depth. This leads to a premature breakout in the presence of impact loading such as in a case of sawing branches which then causes the saw chain to be unusable for work because the particular cutting link must be exchanged or the entire saw chain must be replaced. The useful like of the high quality and expensive hard-metal inserts is not fully utilized as a consequence of the premature breakout so that the expensive and complex use of such wear-resistant inserts cannot be optimally utilized. Contributing to this disadvantage is that the hard-metal insert part does not have a complete form fit in the direction of movement of the chain and adequate solder gaps are not provided especially because of the pulled-down side portions of the hard-metal insert.
Published German patent application DE-OS 14 53 169 discloses a saw chain for rchain saws wherein the cutting teeth are made of hard-metal pieces soldered into the base body of the cutting tooth and which are seated in a form-tight manner in recesses of the base body of the cutting tooth so that they exclusively have a degree of freedom laying approximately perpendicular to the direction of movement of the chain. The inserted hard-metal plate is braced on a forward and a rearward supporting surface of the recess in the base body (viewed in the forward direction of movement) with the rearward supporting surface extending substantially transverse to the direction of movement. However, this saw chain is a pointed tooth chain wherein the cutting forces act essentially in the direction of movement so that no significant bending forces are transmitted as pressure forces into the even flat base body of the cutting link. Accordingly, the loading forces of such a pointed-tooth cutting link are substantially less than the cutting link configured as planing teeth for which the danger of the breakout of the hard-metal insert is less.